Windows Mobile 6.5 UI a big improvement; more work needed

At the Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona, Microsoft announced Windows …

As was widely rumored, leaked, and predicted, Microsoft made a series of announcements regarding its Windows Mobile platform at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2009 in Barcelona on Monday. CEO Steve Ballmer proclaimed that smartphones would soon comprise 50 percent of worldwide mobile phones and that Windows would be the platform that would continue to be adopted not only on the PC but on mobile devices as well. As part of the various announcements relating to devices, software, and services, Ballmer unveiled Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft My Phone, and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. To simplify things, the new Windows Mobile phones would start to be marketed as "Windows phones" in the fall, which is when the new devices from Microsoft partners will begin to ship.

"Windows phones bring together the best of the Web, the PC, and the phone so you can connect instantly to the experiences you care about, no matter where you are," Ballmer said. "We're working with partners across the industry to deliver a new generation of Windows phones that break down the barriers between people, information, and applications and provide great end-to-end experiences that span your entire life, at work and at home."

Windows Mobile 6.5

Windows Mobile 6.1 is saddled with a user interface that was not really designed for finger use. Windows Mobile touchscreen devices are designed to be used with a stylus, rather than a finger, and some Windows Mobile devices do not even have touchscreens at all, resulting in a UI with lots of small buttons and menus—and none of the touch features (such as touch-based scrolling with inertia) that users now expect. Windows Mobile 6.5 replaces these old interfaces with a system designed for touch.

This new UI has two main components: a new finger-friendly Today screen, and the honeycomb Start screen. We've seen both of these in leaked screenshots and builds, and the software shown off today matches those leaked images. The new Today screen serves a similar purpose to Today screens of old, but offers large buttons, smooth finger scrolling, and considerably improved graphics. The Start screen is a new concept. It replaces the Start Menu and Programs browser in current versions with a single finger-friendly panel.

IE Mobile 6.5

Finger-friendliness is also apparent in the newly-designed unlock and call answering screens. The unlock screen includes a simple but desirable innovation. The basic unlock action is to slide a button across the screen. What's novel is that you can jump straight from the unlock screen to other parts of the user interface (such as e-mail, text messages, or voicemail) by changing where you slide. The top position just unlocks the phone; the lower positions jump to particular locations within the software. This is a simple idea, but a useful one nonetheless. The call answering screen similarly uses slide, offering both slide-to-answer and slide-to-ignore.

Before version 6.5 was even in beta, Microsoft released an updated version of its mobile browser for Windows Mobile 6.1. Though this made big improvements to the rendering engine, the user interface remained in the Windows Mobile 6.1 era. With 6.5, not only are there further renderer improvements, but the interface itself has also been overhauled, again with the objective being greater finger-friendliness.

Microsoft stressed that it is now delivering on the demand from users to have the PC browsing experience on their phones. This means that IE will not just provide a decent renderer; it means that it will also support Flash, and allow for switching between mobile and regular versions of websites. Though others (most notably Apple) have made this claim before, the inclusion of full Flash support should lead to far greater uniformity across browser platforms than is currently possible.

Microsoft My Phone

My Phone is a backup and storage service for your phone. It moves everything from your phone up into the cloud so that you can access and manage it from anywhere, allowing you to look up and edit contact information on the Web, share photos and videos with friends, or even move your text messages and calendar appointments to a new phone. The technology is possible thanks to Microsoft's acquisition of MobiComp in June 2008.

The site for My Phone went live last week, but sign-up for the beta is only now working, so if you're interested in getting into the invitation-only beta, go there now. Although My Phone will be built-in for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, it will also be downloadable for versions 6.0 and 6.1. The site outlines three main features for the service, which comes with only 200 MB of storage (we're a little disappointed this doesn't simply use the 25GB that every Windows Live user gets with SkyDrive).

Automatic syncing can be set up to run automatically every day at a time of your choosing, or you can force the sync at any time (in a manner similar to Windows Update, say). In this way, calendar items, contacts, tasks, appointments, text messages, and other information are kept up-to-date in the cloud. It also allows the user to store music, photos, documents, and videos at a third location (the first two being your Windows phone and the second being your PC).

According to the unofficial roadmap, Microsoft is already planning My Phone versions 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0. While version 1.0 will be a free and ad-supported, a subscription-based premium service will come sometime this summer, when Microsoft starts testing version 1.5. Officially, there are no plans to offer the service for non-Windows phone operating systems, but unofficially there are plans to extend it to non-Windows platforms this summer. Version 2.0 will be integrated with other Microsoft properties like Live Mesh and the new Windows Marketplace for Mobile, providing users with a way to buy and store applications and their data on remote servers.

Windows Marketplace for Mobile

Originally codenamed SkyMarket, Windows Marketplace for Mobile was meant to ship with Windows Mobile 7, but since that has been delayed to sometime in 2010, it will now arrive with 6.5. The marketplace, which goes beyond the current Windows Mobile Catalog, will provide direct-to-phone mobile applications and will be accessible from both the Windows phone and the Web. Users will be able to use the marketplace to find and purchase mobile applications with their Windows Live ID.

Although applications on Windows Marketplace for Mobile will undergo a simple security and compatibility check, it looks like they won't be subject to the same kind of arbitrary scrutiny as software on the iTunes store. Microsoft will also host its own applications on the marketplace. At MWC, the company also announced Microsoft Recite, a voice search technology for Windows phones version 6.x, which lets users capture, search, and retrieve spoken notes using just their voice. The website with the Technology Preview became available yesterday, demonstration video and all.

Beyond 6.5

Windows Mobile is in need of some serious love from Microsoft. In spite of Microsoft's relatively long history in this market, the much newer mobile phone operating systems from both Apple and Google (not to mention the forthcoming Palm webOS) have in most regards trounced Windows Mobile, leaving Redmond playing catch-up.

The improvements in 6.5 will certainly go some way towards redressing this deficit. Making the UI finger-friendly will address probably the biggest problem with Windows Mobile as it currently stands. Microsoft's attempt to cram the desktop Windows interface into a phone haven't resulted in a pleasant UI; Windows Mobile is too fiddly, too cluttered, and too complex. The new 6.5 UI looks like a big improvement, giving Windows Mobile users a proper touch interface that works without a stylus.

That said, there still appears to be ample scope for improvement. Some parts of the new OS are apparently untouched; Windows Media Player, for example, is unchanged from 6.1—meaning it's still going to need a stylus. This kind of jarring inconsistency makes for an extremely unpleasant user experience, and it looks like we will have to wait for Windows Mobile 7 (which will hopefully have a more Zune-like media player) before that gets remedied. The piecemeal approach taken in 6.5 is never going to deliver the coherent interface that we see on competing devices that have been designed from the ground up for touch.

Windows Mobile 6.5 is not going to put an end to the diversity of hardware capabilities currently seen in the Windows phone market, either. Although there are compulsory requirements—Windows Mobile 6.5 hardware must all have a set of hard keys to do things like open the Start screen—specifications like the screen resolution and even the presence of a touchscreen are still going to be up to the hardware vendors. This variation makes it much harder for both Microsoft and third parties to deliver truly compelling Windows Mobile software. Even a measure as simple as mandating a touchscreen would enable software vendors to tailor their software to the hardware much more effectively than is currently possible.

As flexible as the hardware specs are in some ways, they're lacking in others. Chief among the deficits is the lack of support for capacitative touchscreens. All touch-enabled 6.5 devices will have resistive touchscreens. The upshot of this is that they will all also lack support for multitouch.

With Windows Mobile 7 still not likely until April 2010, Windows Mobile is going to continue to have a tough time against competing phone platforms. 6.5 is certainly a necessary update, and My Phone in particular also looks compelling, but this release fails to knock our socks off. It will probably appease current Windows Mobile users and dissuade them from defecting, but for the buyer entering the smartphone market for the first time, non-Windows platforms are still going to have a considerable lead.

38 Reader Comments

Remember, any updates to the OS on your WinME device (like updating your browser or updating the OS itself), requires the EXPLICIT approval of three parties: Microsoft (to develop and/or release the update), the cell phone maker (to update and/or approve the update to make it compatible with your phone) and the the cellular provider (at lest in the US, to approve the change for your phone).

And I wouldn't go for a WinME 6.5 device, particularly since there is no guarantee that you can update it to WinME 7, which will be released less than six months after WinME 6.5 devices will first become available.

Steve Ballmer proclaimed that smartphones would soon comprise 50 percent of worldwide mobile phones and that Windows would be the platform that would continue to be adopted not only on the PC but on mobile devices as well.

Any time Steve Ballmer starts making statements about Microsoft products my expectations any progress has been made in the product drops. He has made so many statements that are either out of touch with what is going on in either MS's or competitors' products that just shows that he has little clue about technology or is just towing the company line. His background is marketing and business, and things like the trials do not help where he intentionally tries to say I have no specific knowledge of that until we were being sued.

The approval of cellular provider is needed in Korea, as well. That pretty much stopped any updates to the already-released WM-based phones. Providers seem to have a policy of 'do not support upgrading of existing phones beyond bugfixes'.

BTW, I'm wondering why kindakrazy is abbreviating Windows Mobile to 'WinME', when that moniker usually refers to Windows Millennium Edition? I mean, 'WinMo' or 'WM', I saw (I use latter), but WinME? Is he confusing it with WinCE, since that shares the same base?

> Microsoft (to develop and/or release the update), the cell phone maker (to update and/or approve the update to make it compatible with your phone) and the the cellular provider (at lest in the US, to approve the change for your phone).

That is only true if you lock yourself to a subsidized phone. I don't know about CDMA, but with GSM phones you can use whatever phone you'd like as long as your willing to pay full price for it.

I really dislike branded and crippled phones, so if I am going to get a smart phone the only way I am willing to do it is by paying full price.

You've got to be fucking kidding me, HONEYCOMB? Was there some kind of inter-office contest to see who could come up with the most ridiculous, least space-efficient touch screen interface? Was someone really obsessed with hex based table top strategy games perhaps? Or was the desire to not look like an iPhone so strong that there was an "anything but a grid" mandate?

I'm sorry, maybe there's some substance underneath that, but I couldn't keep reading once I saw the honeycomb.

The honeycomb interface looks terrible. It's space wasting and even in its current form it is really unattractive. Why are the icon and label so as a unit so high within the hexagon? That's not even addressing the issue of having to constantly move your eyes up and down in order to read the labels. If you watch some of the demo on Engadget, someone asks the demonstrator how you know when you're at the top or bottom of the scrollable honeycomb screen. The answer is that there's a blank half-hexagon at the top of the screen (of course) and at the bottom there are two unused quarter hexagons. So they're actually selling the space-wasting design as a feature.

Maybe they did it so they can sell you and upgrade when they go to octagons.

It looks like to move/re-order items you have to use a context menu and Move Up or Move Down? If only someone could invent some type of touch screen where you could just drag the icons where you wanted them. That'd be slick.

Microsoft App Store? Of course. They should just change their logo to an Orange and get it over with. I understand it's something they pretty much had to do but it might have been smart to do it with a little less fare perhaps. It's never good to make such a public display you are behind your competition.

I see Task Manager is a default icon on the Honey Comb. Snicker..

Based on the screen shots I wonder why the controls in Mobile IE are so gigantic? Seems like a waste of precious space. If only there was some type of highly accurate touch screen that could allow smaller, less obtrusive, UI controls.

On the same train of thought... what's with the gigantic text and jagged edges? I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say the jagged edges are JPG compression artifacts. No way they'd ship something like that in this day & age.

I really don't like the idea that you have to constantly switch between touch & stylus based operation depending on the application you are using. That's just such a hack job. It reminds me of these other so-called modern WM phones that use some special home screen but as soon as you launch an app from it you're back to regular ole dysfunctional WM GUI.

I guess they didn't have much choice here but to try to salvage 6.x since 7.x is still so far away but it's almost one of those situations where the new coat of paint makes the old dingy parts look even worse.

I find the obsession with touchscreen (by the post author, Microsoft and the comments) to leave this discussion incredibly incomplete. Yes, I understand that all the new fancy and expensive cell phones have a touchscreen. However, I fail to see how that makes touchscreen phones the end of the smartphone story.

Windows Mobile 6.1 (and previous versions) comes in two flavors, Professional (touchscreen) and Standard (non-touchscreen). I have a non-touchscreen WM 6.1 phone and while I can find plenty to complain about WM (what I wouldn't give for a quit option in IE and Camera), the non-touchscreen user interface is not one of them. Most applications (phone, calendar, email, audio and camera) are all accessible from the home screen. That means that I get a quick view of what's up with all those things without touching anything, and access to any of those applications is only a scroll and click away -- no fumbling with fat fingers or reaching for a stylus. I don't have the only WM Standard phone out there, either. Not everyone wants the gimicky UI of a touchscreen device or to shell out the money for one.

I can only assume that the honeycomb layout is only for the touchscreen flavor of WM 6.5, since there's no way a D-pad could be counted on to navigate the off-cardinal hexes. Could the author (or anyone else) comment on how the UI changes for the Standard edition of WM 6.5?

Seemingly there will be no updates from 6.1 to 6.5 for most users, as a) subsidized WM phones are never updated and b) in genuine Microsoft style, 6.5 needs twice the resources to achieve the same.

But I don't worry. What 6.5 does is what HTC has been doing for the past couple years: adding a thin veneer of whiz-bang touchy-feelyness on the home screen, and then mostly dumping you into bare WinCE. At least, HTC has also touchified the media player. The calendar, contact list and ToDo apps, however, as well as Office Mobile, remain both finger and user hostile in HTC's 6.1, and I'm sure that they will remain exactly the same in 6.5.

Don't get me wrong, I do dislike WM but I use it every day, and it works for me a lot better than S60 because it is a true PDA. I had never had a PDA, and now I wonder how I managed without it. My HTC Touch does sync data to the PC, has a PIM I have proved intelligent enough to figure out, and there is a lot of inexpensive or free software I can install on it that vastly improves the user experience.

So, while I wait for an Android phone, I will just update its internet browser and enjoy exactly the same advantages (and aggravation) as 6.5 provides. I hope Fenec arrives soon, because it looks way, way more promising than the new MSIE Mobile.

It looks like to move/re-order items you have to use a context menu and Move Up or Move Down? If only someone could invent some type of touch screen where you could just drag the icons where you wanted them. That'd be slick.

"Windows Mobile 6.5 replaces these old interfaces with a system designed for touch."

Why? What's so good about smudging your screen with your greasy fingerprints all the time? Ever tried writing a note with your fingertip? Ever tried highlighting text to copy and paste it? You can't even copy and paste text on the iPhone last time I checked. What's wrong with a stylus? It's not like they take up much room. The DS has as stylus and that's a successful product. Just because Apple think we all want to use our fingers doesn't mean it's the best way to operate a touch screen.

Windows Mobile was an operating system you had to work at to make it more usable and even throw money at it for add-ons like Pocketplus. When you did however, it packed way more functionality than phones like the iPhone do. Yes the interface sucks and needs overhauling but why this obsession with touch? Doesn't Microsoft risk bringing us a product that doesn't have the power user features of current Win mobile or the fun-factor of the iPhone?

@aurich " Or was the desire to not look like an iPhone so strong that there was an "anything but a grid" mandate?"

Likely. MSFT has a long history of absolutely refusing to do anything like previous work by competitor. When they 'invent' something it is always from scratch. When they invented the spreadsheet with Excel, every single function was different than in 1-2-3. When they invented directory services, everything from Novell's NDS was renamed. When they invented platform independent progrmamming in the form of C# every single call from java was renamed - some by just one letter.

Now that they have 'invented' the smart phone, you can be sure that abaoslutely nothing was learned/taken from any other product. Nothing. Not even the common senses GUI grid layout as used in their own desktop products....

I find the obsession with touchscreen (by the post author, Microsoft and the comments) to leave this discussion incredibly incomplete. Yes, I understand that all the new fancy and expensive cell phones have a touchscreen. However, I fail to see how that makes touchscreen phones the end of the smartphone story

I agree. I have owned a Sanyo 6700, a HTC 6800, and a MotoQ. I still use my Q and I like it the most out of all three. Yes it does have the stripped down version of WM but like you pointed out, the most commonly used apps are right on the home screen. The use of a stylus with other WM phones is a bit annoying and it is good to see some things being optomized for touch, however I find phones like the iPhone that are all touch equally annoying. Nothing can replace the tactile response of real buttons, not even a gimicky Snapple top clicking screen (read: BlackBerry).

Impressive that you managed to write the entirely article without mentioning the iPhone!

I agree the iPhone could do with some more buttons - a hardware pause/play button for a start. I've had a windows mobile pda for a while and while it's generally worked (for TomTom mainly), it's ugly as hell, badly made and a pain to get things set up with the maze of networking settings. It doesn't help when OEMs add conflicting device specific screens...

Because using a stylus may be "ok" for a PDA but its stupid for a phone. Pull phone out, fiddle stylus out of hole in phone. use stylus to make some interactions, fiddle stylus back, put phone away( not to forget about loose stylus ) Your finger is always at your hand and hard to loose.

Windows Mobile is primarily a PDA OS. Always was. Don't judge it by the smartphone standards.

And the stilus is a good, good thing. You get the same level of usability with twice as many controls on the screen.

Let's face it, people: the explosion of the smartphone market is dumbing down the whole palm-sized form factor. You can run complicated software on those devices, with a nontrivial input model - yet somehow everyone is concerned with how it will fit with Joe Blow's fat clumsy fingers.

Originally posted by wesley96:...BTW, I'm wondering why kindakrazy is abbreviating Windows Mobile to 'WinME', when that moniker usually refers to Windows Millennium Edition? I mean, 'WinMo' or 'WM', I saw (I use latter), but WinME? Is he confusing it with WinCE, since that shares the same base?

The 'mobile' version of Windows has been rebranded a number of times, and WinME refers to Windows Mobile Edition. But apparently I misremembered the rebranding, as from googling, it appears to just be Windows Mobile (without 'Edition').

But this clusterf*ck of coming versions (v6.5, then a couple months later, v7.0) is going to be a bizarre thing for MS and partners to market, as they have to push v6.5 as being the best thing since sliced bread, then right after that, push v7.0 as being the bomb and that phone you just bought with v6.5 should be thrown out.

It may be a decent PDA OS but it sucks as a phone OS. Since smartphones are essentially taking over and PDAs dying out this is no good thing for MS.

quote:

is dumbing down the whole palm-sized form factor. You can run complicated software on those devices, with a nontrivial input model

I think the main thing is that smartphones and esp. Apple managed to make tasks that most people want to do with their mobile devices (email/web browsing/contacts/pictures/music/video/perhaps reading an occasional word document or pdf) very accessible on a pocket-sized, non-stylus smartphone.

Its true that you will have a hard time modifying an excel spreadsheet without a stylus on the other hand complicated tasks like that are not very enjoyable on a tiny screen with fiddly controls anyway. So smartphones are a clear example of "good enough" for a majority of people. Doesn't mean that PDAs do not provide some amazing functionality. Its just not the perfect device for most people.

Originally posted by bozox:Windows Mobile is primarily a PDA OS. Always was. Don't judge it by the smartphone standards.

As someone else said, PDAs are dead. If you would like, we can judge WinMo7 against smartphone standards and instead say it is four years late. Neither situation is flattering.

quote:

And the stylus is a good, good thing. You get the same level of usability with twice as many controls on the screen.

If you mean "same" as "harder to use, easier to lose, and more difficult to interface", then yeah, the stylus is awesome.

However, most people don't want "same", we want "better".

quote:

Let's face it, people: the explosion of the smartphone market is dumbing down the whole palm-sized form factor.

Let's face it, people: the explosion of the PC market is dumbing down the whole mini-PC form factor.Let's face it, people: the explosion of the GUI is dumbing down the whole computing interface.Let's face it, people: the explosion of WYSIWYG is dumbing down the whole document creation interface.Let's face it, people: the explosion of the gaming market is dumbing down the whole hardcore gaming crowd.

I think what you really need to face is this: the palm-sized form factor suffered from usability problems that prevented it from exploding in the first place and Apple was the first to issue the necessary fixes.

quote:

You can run complicated software on those devices, with a nontrivial input model - yet somehow everyone is concerned with how it will fit with Joe Blow's fat clumsy fingers.

We don't want complicated software. We want easy to use software with a trivial input model.

Because using a stylus may be "ok" for a PDA but its stupid for a phone. Pull phone out, fiddle stylus out of hole in phone. use stylus to make some interactions, fiddle stylus back, put phone away( not to forget about loose stylus ) Your finger is always at your hand and hard to loose.

OK granted for quickly checking an e-mail or dialling a number, a finger is preferable. For lots of other smart phone tasks its neither preferable nor practical however.

Well, I'm not ditching my PDA anytime soon Stilus, 24x24 buttons and all. Regardless, the alternative for the PDA-style fine-grained UI that the smartphone world is offering - the "QWERTY phones" - is no better, IMHO.

>> We want easy to use software with a trivial input model.

Enjoy your iFart.

And yes, for the sake of full disclosure: I write and sell PDA software that doesn't easily translate to the iPhone-like devices.

>> the palm-sized form factor suffered from usability problems that prevented it from exploding in the first place

Usability? Hardly. For the tasks they were marketed for, PDAs did fine. It's just that making phone calls wasn't one of them.

Originally posted by bozox:Well, I'm not ditching my PDA anytime soon Stylus, 24x24 buttons and all. Regardless, the alternative for the PDA-style fine-grained UI that the smartphone world is offering - the "QWERTY phones" - is no better, IMHO.

For data entry, perhaps. However the entire PC market has shown us that data entry is a small fraction of the average user's effort. It's data access that takes up more resources.

For all those things, I don't think that sitting down, concentrating on the screen, and using both hands is too big a tradeoff. Dialing with a single hand while driving, now that's a usage scenario that would be poorly served by a stilus-based device, to say the least. But who would browse the web, watch videos, etc. in that mode?

>> So you have a data-entry text heavy app?

No. More of a dictionary lookup app, with a rather hairy query parameter set.

There's another thing. If you make your screen simpler by removing controls, you have to make up for that by introducing navigation. The total amount of controls is roughly tied to the set of functionality your app is providing - that's more or less a constant. If you remove some of the controls from the screen, you have to place them on another screen - we're not sacrificing functionality, are we? - and you have to introduce the means of switching between all those screens, paging, scrolling, etc. So the complexity didn't go anywhere, it's just out of immediate sight. When the control values are tied, it's counterintuitive to have them on different screens.

>> scrolling pages, zooming

OK, you got me on this one. However, out of curiosity... How does iPhone handle scrolling of documents with hyperlinks on them? If you, by accident, start your dragging at an active area, will it properly guess your intent - guess that you're scrolling, not trying to follow the link?

For all those things, I don't think that sitting down, concentrating on the screen, and using both hands is too big a tradeoff.

Sure it is. It means I can't check my email in an elevator, browse the web while holding a sleeping baby, watch YouTube while drinking a can of Coke, etc. Would you argue also that it's not too much to ask that people use two hands while controlling a mouse?

quote:

Dialing with a single hand while driving, now that's a usage scenario that would be poorly served by a stilus-based device, to say the least. But who would browse the web, watch videos, etc. in that mode?

Or maybe I'm eating a banana, carrying a bag, or holding a package and I need to fire up Maps to look where I am, or an email to find out what the address is, or a web browser to look up something?

quote:

>> So you have a data-entry text heavy app?

No. More of a dictionary lookup app, with a rather hairy query parameter set.

And you are certain that this cannot be implemented on an iPhone with a set of chainable dropdowns?

quote:

There's another thing. If you make your screen simpler by removing controls, you have to make up for that by introducing navigation. The total amount of controls is roughly tied to the set of functionality your app is providing - that's more or less a constant. If you remove some of the controls from the screen, you have to place them on another screen - we're not sacrificing functionality, are we? - and you have to introduce the means of switching between all those screens, paging, scrolling, etc. So the complexity didn't go anywhere, it's just out of immediate sight. When the control values are tied, it's counterintuitive to have them on different screens.

Or you introduce a more complex control langauge. How many "words" can a stylus use? Click, double click, swipe, right?

On an iPhone you have tap, double tap, swipe, double swipe, triple swipe, pinch, stretch, hold, and probably a few more I can't remember off the top of my head.

quote:

>> scrolling pages, zooming

OK, you got me on this one. However, out of curiosity... How does iPhone handle scrolling of documents with hyperlinks on them? If you, by accident, start your dragging at an active area, will it properly guess your intent - guess that you're scrolling, not trying to follow the link?

So for example on the web browser:Tap on a link to follow it.Swipe your finger to pan; if your finger hits a link but you keep moving, it keeps panning.Double tap any area to zoom into that area (picture, text, frame, etc)Double tap the same area to zoom out of that areaTap the top to page upDouble tap the top to go to the beginning of the pageDouble tap the bottom of the page to page downPinch to zoom in an arbitrary amountStretch to zoom out an arbitrary amountHold your finger over a link and a URL pops up

This doesn't even use the double/triple swipe functionality. So I would argue I have a richer "control" set than you do. You have a mouse with one button, while I have a mouse with five!